


Everything You See

by EpiphanyBlue



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Afterlife, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Heaven, Hell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 09:53:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1300636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EpiphanyBlue/pseuds/EpiphanyBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every soul in transition, the saved and the condemned alike, may ask a single burning question. Sure that there is nothing more he could ask for himself, Jean Valjean takes the opportunity to inquire after another, a figure whose shadow lingers on the frayed edges of his life story. The answer shocks him, and he realizes that there is one thing he still desires.<br/>Thus, Valjean finds himself venturing into the very seat of darkness, seeking the tormented soul of his former persecutor, on an audacious mission of mercy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Comfort Offered, Peace Delayed

    He was sure of everything. Everything that mattered in his life had been wound up in those moments of weakness and ecstasy, and then the pure light and profound calm that had and held him as he left his children for another realm. Even surrounded by light, he had relaxed and fallen into a dreamlike state, and thus unawares had been transported. He did not know how he had come to this room of soft light, or precisely what sort of room it was, but he was satisfied enough with how easily he had regained his feet.  
And then, he was asked for his questions.

    “All of humanity lives with questions. The immortal soul will discard its questions along with its wants . But in the first minutes, while some aspects of the mortal spirit remain, each person who passes through the gate, so to speak, may ask a burning question. This gesture is bestowed upon the saved and condemned alike- and there the similarities of fate end.”

    “Tell me, Valjean.” The voice was not so much heard as perceived, which was why Jean Valjean could recognize the source instantly. “What is it you wonder?”

    “Nothing,” Valjean replied.

    "You are certain?”

    Valjean thought hard, though he was not anxious to find anything. There was nothing he wanted to know. There was nothing he wanted. _I am at peace_ , he thought. _My daughter- my Cosette- is safe, and loved, and she is happy—not at the moment, poor dear, but she will be. I kept my promise to Fantine. I have tried not to forget those who were kind to me, undeserving as I am of their graciousness... I had thought my life to be over. It turned out to have just begun. I have done so much in my years, done and seen and learned. I have known such strength and weakness, I have known love. And now I am secure, I am out of danger. I— Was I not?_ The thought hit him like a round, smooth stone abruptly dropped in the well of his heart. _Was I not? I must have been. After all_

Ah. Now he knew.

    “You are certain.”

    Valjean once again felt the words directly on his mind. It was a different sensation than it had been before, though the words were the same. He had a new answer to them, one that disconcerted him. “No. If I may, Lord, if it please you to tell me—“ He lowered his eyes and halted suddenly.

    “It is my pleasure that your mind be set at ease.”

    Valjean relaxed. He straightened his back and pointed his eyes forward. He had not expected such interior resistance. His question felt as dark in his mind and heavy in his throat as it had in his breast. It was, perhaps, unwise, dangerous, presumptuous.

    Nonetheless, it was his only question. He took a breath.

    “Where is Javert?"

    As soon as he had asked, a chill ran up his spine and seized his shoulders, and before he could perceive the answer, he knew. Still, the answer came.

    “Not here, Valjean.”

    “Not—here. No,” he breathed. “How could- no, no. That isn’t what I wanted.” He was suddenly aware that his response could perhaps be taken as insolence. “My dear Lord, do not be angry with me. I mean nothing against You. I am merely surprised and upset. Regretful, sympathetic. Some vestiges of my mortal spirit must still taint me. I had feared the outcome of my question before even asking it, but I had wondered. I never mourned for him—you know—I wondered. I was unsure. It was unsettling to consider that such a thing could have befallen him, for I confess, though he was my enemy, I had thought him diligent, responsible, moral if strangely so- He had his motives and those were grounded. The law is a necessary thing, though not the most necessary- that is something more sublime. He was my punishment—but still he was a man. I believe he thought me _his_ punishment. His punishment, plague, his recurring obstacle. Was he wrong and I right? I cannot debate it in myself. My heart cries out, and I am troubled. I suppose that I have repressed my thoughts where he is concerned, and now I must wait to weather them through.” Valjean lowered himself to his knees, his head bowed. “I will accept. You are just. Your judgments of all are sound and solid. If he has fallen, if he has failed... it is a greater grief than I had imagined it would be. But so it is.” He closed his eyes. “I know you cannot bring him here. Not if I and all the saints would wish it.” He opened them again. There was a profound sigh. “Though still, it seems... _I_ would have it so.”

    “Rise and come forward, Jean Valjean.”

    The voice stirred through the heaviness in his mind. He rose in anticipation.

    “If you truly care about this man, do not grieve. The care of a righteous man speaks in this world."

    Valjean’s eyes widened. He wanted to speak, but he found neither breath nor voice.

    “There is a chance remaining. Your friend Javert may not be lost for good.”

    “Can this be true?” Valjean was stunned. It did not matter that he and Javert had never been anything remotely resembling friends. He felt a luminosity gathering at the core of his being, a joyous warmth diffusing the distress that had chilled him moments before.

    “It is sure as the generosity and love which you have borne others. Sure as your very existence, there is a hope. And you are to be part of it."

    It began to dawn on Valjean how monumental this all was. He had been selected to help carry out a sublime plan. He was ardent, and he was humbled, and he was terrified. Not one of these reactions was in the least irrational.

    “You have cultivated a brilliant spirit. All the same, I would not have given you this task had I thought you would not accept."

    “And indeed I shall. Wholeheartedly.”

    “I am glad of it. You shall be impressed into the multitude, and then you shall go to him."

 

    Thus Jean Valjean was welcomed into the cloud of witnesses and installed in the great order of Angels and Ministers of Grace. He was outfitted with a loose tunic of soft white linen, and he was given instructions on when and how he could divulge the angel’s signature but typically concealed attribute- a pair of bright, splendid wings.

    Thus also, he met with a Minister named Clément, who had been informed of Valjean’s assignment and was to oversee his departure. Clément had admitted to a certain astonishment upon hearing of the plan. “I mean that,” he said, “in a very positive way. It is a great thing, to be astonished. Imagine if one was to be inoculated against wonder! What would time be, but dullness? What would eternity be, but tedium?” He was earnest and amiable, with an air of wisdom and an aspect of youth- two things that did not seem to line up, but which came together splendidly in this chestnut-haired, purple-robed figure. Clément put Valjean at ease even as his tone shifted from good humor to solemnity and back again in the space of a minute. Valjean found a certain reassurance in talking over his task with somebody who was as much comrade as a superior officer.

    They wandered through a broad and vibrant field, a pastime and a scene that Valjean had sorely missed for the last several years in Paris. He looked around him. There were wild oats and bluebells. Then, a few feet ahead, odd leaves- like nettles without their spines. He recognized a myriad of living things, some of which would not normally have grown side by side. Every so often, something a bit different. And eventually, a few meters before him, a plum tree. Clément took Valjean’s elbow and nodded towards it. They approached the tree. As they stepped past it, the colorful scene surrounding them began to fade. Jean found himself standing with Clément in an empty room, like that in which he had asked his burning question. This one was similarly indistinct, but it rather than soft white, it was bathed in dark grey. Valjean and Clément alone remained bright and distinct.

    Clément folded his hands and gazed upward. Valjean raised his head attentively. Once again, as he had anticipated, he felt the voice that had given him his momentous assignment.

    “At your noble request you shall go, Jean. So long as you keep your focus, you will be guarded from the worst of it. The torments that are not yours will not touch you. Nonetheless, be cautioned that what you are entering into is an experience not to be wished on anyone.”

    Valjean felt a twinge in his heart. _Not to be wished on anyone_.

    “You will know things perhaps better unknown, see things that no one should ever have to see.”

    “And I will retrieve an upright man.”

    “We will see.”

    “I will find Javert, and I will return with him.”

    “It is not certain.”

    “Is it possible I could fail to find him?” Valjean looked at Clément, who gazed at him dolefully but did not answer.

    Once again, Valjean perceived the response. “He could refuse.”

    “To be found?”

    “He could refuse to be received.”

    “I don’t see.”

    “Javert has not been changed or renewed as you have, Jean. No repairs, corrections, or improvements have been made. You must realize, the flaws in the human spirit are critical in making misery and pain effective. Souls that fail to reach Heaven are not transformed- rather, they are bound.

     His consciousness is still predominantly mortal, his understanding extremely fallible. His capacity for viciousness remains—along with the desire. His soul and yours are very different creatures. He could refuse your help, and sadly, it would be nothing new. Angels have given warnings for centuries unheeded. And you will remember that even angels fall.”

    All of this had been infused with a mournful timbre, which then at once gave way to a tone of certitude.

    “Do not believe everything you see, Valjean, and do not believe everything you hear. Though I hardly need to tell you that. A wise soul knows when to listen, and when to turn away.”


	2. Memory is Sometimes a Weapon

    The air split in two. Valjean found himself looking a few feet in front of him at a wide crevice a shade past black, beyond which, an absence. An absence from which came a deep but hollow roar and a swarm of restless clouds, clouds of a menacing black, grey, blue, violet, only flashes of white. The clouds arranged themselves into a flashing horizontal whirlpool. Valjean stepped inside. He was not surprised to feel his clothes and hair lifted and flying about him, or an icy wind lashing and caressing his limbs and winding about him like an otherworldly serpent. His eyes began to water. He closed them, and continued resolutely forward. He was not sure what he would see when he emerged. Horror beyond comprehension, but what could that mean? He would deal with that when he came to it. For now he had no images and no expectations—therefore, no reason for fear.

    A few moments later the storm subsided. He opened his eyes and found himself in a pale forest of fog and obscurity. It was as if the clouds had fallen to earth, obstinately and jealously refusing to part with their raindrops. They huddled around Valjean in damp and dismal droves. Out of curiosity, Valjean looked around. Behind him, all was black. Light before and dark behind: the shade itself was urging him forward. He turned towards the lightest spot in the mist and continued to walk.

    Partway through, he stopped and turned. He thought that he had heard a voice—a woman’s voice, sweet, beckoning, strangely familiar. Where he turned to look, the mist had cleared somewhat, revealing the trees and dirt paths of an actual forest. A gentle breeze rustled through leaves and branches above him. Valjean hesitated. The scene was inviting, perhaps too much so to be trusted or believed. Yet it was clear and bright, and Valjean was confident that if he were to honestly get turned around he would somehow be led back to his objective and its path. He decided to follow the trail. It was not long before he reached the edge of the forest and saw before him a broad field. Some distance away and to his left were the ramparts of a small country town—much like those of Montreuil-sur-Mer. Valjean lingered in the shade between two trees. He heard the voice again, much closer, and this time he recognized it.

    The voice belonged to a slim and pale young woman who had just appeared in the field, wearing a pale blue gown with a high waist and puffs around the shoulders. She strode briskly through the grass and wildflowers, her skirt billowing in the wind about her legs. She wore no bonnet, and her hair shone like fields of ripe wheat blessed by the summer sun. Yet it fell not quite to her shoulders.

    The woman approached the edge of the forest, and Valjean would have drawn back, had he not been mesmerized by the delight in her eyes and her strange but radiant smile—strange due to the dark absence of two front teeth. She was laughing. It was a richer sound than he had ever heard from her, but it was undoubtedly her laugh- the laugh of Fantine.

     What was making her so happy was immediately apparent. Fantine walked out a bit further into the field and knelt down, arms open wide to receive a little girl, a somewhat scrawny brunette dressed in pink who ran towards her in excitement. The girl embraced her mother, who was perhaps kneeling because—touching consideration!—she was not yet strong enough to pick up her child. Nonetheless Fantine wrapped her arms around Cosette, and two slender frames moved in tandem side to side with a slow and gentle swing.

    As soon as Valjean had witnessed this tender episode, it was swallowed up, and the cloud forest was again around him. Again he had no guide but shades of light. And now there was this image on his mind of innocent beauty that never was, though it perhaps could have been. A profound longing, a solemn and sympathetic desire, an impossible wish that had never truly left him. He faced the brightest shadow and continued to walk.

    The clouds directly in front of him parted to reveal a wall of something like polished black granite, extending left, right, and upwards in a seemingly infinite plane. Valjean turned right and walked parallel to the wall, gliding his left hand over the cool stone in hopes of discovering a fissure. He found instead, some meters away, a wooden door. He tapped it, and it gave way slightly. He pushed it, and it swung inward. He walked through.

    He stood on grey rock and before him was darker than behind him. He could see ground up to a few feet away. Then it all faded into black, above and below him. All was silence. The space before him seemed to have no opening and no closing. He was not sure whether or not to go forward. He thought of opening his wings. They would not respond. Going backwards was pointless and cowardly. He took a slow step forward, then another, continuing with his eyes wide open and his arms trembling.

    Nine steps. He was in the darkness. There was ground beneath him.

    Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.

    Fourteen. Fifteen.

    Sixteen.

    Seventeen.

    Eighteen.

    There was a roar, and Valjean’s surroundings were ablaze. He was in an immense cavern, bathed in flickering red and yellow light. Before him was a parapet of the same color and composition as the floor, rising directly from it. He approached and laid his hands on this wall as he gazed out into a great pit. It was wide and deep and full of impenetrable darkness. The firelight on the walls did not come from here. This obscure void was ringed by a deep orange-brown and scarlet walkway, descending through numerous levels in a continual circular incline. He had started to hear things again. There were moans that made his mind shudder. There was a cry that could have stirred tears and frozen them at birth.

    The worst sound was a rough metallic clanking, deep, sluggish, and all too familiar.

    He saw it then. He saw _them_ then. One, then another, filing out of an unseen doorway onto the trail below. Each head bowed, each body shaking. Their necks ringed by charred iron. The collars connected one to the other to the other by great black links. Men, bent in ways and places in and at which the human spinal column would not usually bend. The chains on their necks branched off at the collar to somewhat smaller chains, holding up their hands in wide cuffs. The cuffs in turn were linked to other cuffs on the ankles of the being directly in front of them. The man at the front had his own hands linked together and riveted to a band around his waist. He marched steadily in the half-exposed hallway, shoulders and back heaving as though every step robbed all breath from his body. The chain moved slowly into the open. Every few moments a new member appeared.

     Valjean watched, stricken. His shoulders had stiffened, his hands and teeth clenched at the sound of metal links. He was stranded in a hall of nightmares—this one his very own. His long studied equanimity had been snatched, and he was in the rule of his darkest memories and most feral instincts. Hearing the chain come closer to him, he dropped to a crouch on the floor, arms tucked in, shielding himself, hiding. This position was suggestive of a night, a desperate and gloomy night, at the port of Toulon in 1801. They had found him then, this savage and terrified creature crouching in darkness beneath the keel of a cradled vessel. Barely a hundred yards away from those terrible walls.

    In the shadows, the flame of torches, the distant clanking, it all came back to him. He knew how this would end. It would never end.

    Then after a minute he realized that nothing was after him. He stood, disoriented, trying to shake this recollection from him. He looked out, his eyes widening at the sight of this endless parade of the damned. He marvelled at the variety of figures, great and small, pale, dark, slender, heavyset, one by one filing out into the hall. He could not see any of them clearly—and his intuition told him that there could be hundreds.

     He had to find one.

     Valjean looked around him. He had not thought to check if his balcony was connected to the ghastly corkscrew promenade. There did not seem to be a visible door, step, or pathway of any sort. In fact, the balcony was isolated. Directly below was part of the descent along which the chain marched in dismal formation. If he walked to either side, he would be on the roof of the only partially exposed incline.

     If he went forward, he would fall into a vast black hole, and perhaps never land.

     He would have to swing.

     Valjean leaned over the wall and tested the surface on the far side. It was, thankfully, as rough and dense as the side facing him. He struck the top of the wall with a fist. It did not give. He tried a few more spots. He stepped up and stood on top of it. Had he still posessed an earthly heart, it would have pounded. At last satisfied that the parapet would not betray him, he stepped back down. He swung one leg up and over the wall, the other planted on the ground. He hugged the parapet with both arms and raised his other leg to lie atop the structure. Then he placed both hands on the inward edge and let his legs slide into the air. For a moment he hung there. Then he pulled himself upwards somewhat, let his hands fly up and plummeted.

    He landed off-center and crumpled to the floor. He rolled onto his stomach, his head pointing down the incline. His left hip and elbow were probably bruised. But he had landed. He sat up and inclined his head to hear the chain approaching. It was coming down the path behind him. He was afraid of approaching the mess of prisoners, but he was still more loath to wait. Valjean stood and walked up the ramp and straight to the man at the head of the line.

    The man’s pale hair was cropped close to his head. He wore coarse, mottled brown trousers and no shirt. His chest and his arms were streaked with red dust and charcoal, but this was not enough to cover several red and white scars surrounded by a myriad of black, green and violet bruises. Similar bruises accented his square face. Valjean was stunned and repulsed.

    The man showed no sign of being aware of Valjean’s presence. He trudged on, and Valjean felt his abject anguish in the echo of his footsteps. The next man was tanned and dark-haired, with white scars on his back and arms. The next was shorter, with dirty red hair. Then one similar to the first, then one with lank, shining black hair, than one very very dark... Valjean looked down the chain. He saw no final member. He shut his eyes for a moment against the parade of sick and battered souls in front of him. He took a deep breath and trued to calm his mind. Then he started walking up the path, examining every wretched figure in front of him, searching for the man who, he could not but recall, had once wanted nothing more than to put him in chains too much like these.

    One hundred and seventy-eight captives later, Javert was still nowhere to be found. Valjean was becoming more anxious than he could recall ever having been. He had seen too many vacant expressions, too many dull and hollow eyes, too many bent backs and hunched shoulders, too many bruised arms and scarred backs, too many links and lengths of black and grey metal, too many bands around ankles and wrists and throats. Exhausted, he sat back against the wall and let the chain pass him for a while. He was beginning to wonder if he might have known, if he might have thought, if he ought to have been more wary, more prudent, if he could have been better warned- and if so, if he could have turned back or refused to-

    _No._

    No sooner had the thought taken hold than with a rapid nod and a sweep of his arm, he banished it from his mind.

    No.

    This place was getting to him, but the distress, as Earthly distress, was only temporary. It would take some more effort, and likely a great deal more time, but he would get out. And when he did, why then, he had all of eternity to look forward to.

    But somewhere, in this endless province of nightmares, was a man whose eternity was but an oppressing darkness. A man who had abandoned hope and now seemed abandoned by it.

    Somewhere, right now, Javert needed him.  

    Right now, beside Valjean, there was condescending laughter.


End file.
